1. Technical Field
This invention relates to vehicles and, more particularly, to doors for land vehicles.
2. Discussion
Although a variety of door constructions have been proposed in the technical and patent literature, conventional practice is for vehicular doors to include an inner and outer panel fixed together about their edges thereby forming a hollow shell in the interior lower portions thereof. The inner panel includes relatively small access openings to permit hardware such as window regulator mechanisms and the like to be inserted therethrough and attached during the typical on-line assembly process. Of course, this tends to be an awkward operation for the worker and can lead to improper installation.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,306,381 to Presto discloses a door construction for solving this general problem. However, some of the parts in the inner panel subassembly are exposed and accordingly must be painted to match the rest of the door. It is envisioned that the inner panel subassembly is produced off line and then attached as one of the final steps during on-line assembly. Consequently, it appears that this would require that the on-line and off-line assembled parts of the door be separately painted. Of course, it is not always possible to provide a perfect color match under these circumstances.